Strathallan
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The Strathallan was a passenger ship put into service in 1938 by the British shipping company Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company (P&O). The ship was taken over by the British government in 1940 after only four voyages and converted into a troop transport . On December 21, 1942, the Strathallan was torpedoed off the coast of Algeria by a German submarine and sank the following day. She is the second largest Allied ship after the Empress of Britain , which was lost to a German submarine attack in World War II .
The ship
The 23,772 GRT Strathallan was built at Vickers-Armstrong Ltd. built in Barrow-in-Furness and launched there on September 23, 1937 in Dock 723. Godmother was the Countess of Cromer, wife of a P&O director. The Strathallan was the fifth and last of the ships of the "Strath class". The others were the Strathnaver (1931), the Strathaird (1932), the Strathmore (1935), and the Stratheden (1937). The sister ships were also called The White Sisters because of their paintwork. In terms of construction, it was most similar to the Stratheden , which was launched on June 10, 1937. The Strathallan was built to carry passengers and mail from the UK to India and Australia , and could accommodate 448 first class passengers and 563 tourist class passengers.
The ship was powered by two Parsons turbines , which acted on two propellers and enabled a top speed of 20 knots. Except for the yellow chimney, the ship was painted completely white. The 202 meter long and 25 meter wide Strathallan was handed over to the shipping company on March 10, 1938 without prior test drives. On March 18, 1938, she left Tilbury on her maiden voyage to Australia ( Tanger March 22, Port Said March 30, Bur Sudan April 1, Aden April 3, Bombay April 7, Colombo April 10, Fremantle April 19 April 24th , Adelaide April 24th, Melbourne April 25th, Sydney April 27th).
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On June 24, 1938, the ship arrived back in London at the end of its maiden voyage and was used for cruises over the summer . This was followed by three more crossings to Australia. The last voyage as a civilian passenger ship began on June 9, 1939 in Tilbury. On October 9, 1939, the Strathallan arrived back in London. On February 4, 1940, the Strathallan was requisitioned as a troop transport by the British Ministry of Shipping (later the Ministry of War Transport ) and then given a gray camouflage. In early November 1942, the ship brought the first troops to Algeria as part of the upcoming Operation Torch . She had sailed together with her sister ship Stratheden and other troop carriers, including the RMS Queen Elizabeth of the Cunard Line and the Dunnottar Castle of the Union-Castle Line on October 26, 1942 in Greenock (Scotland).
Sinking
The submarine attack
On Friday, December 11, 1942, put Strathallan in Glasgow for their second trip to troops under the command of Captain John Henry Biggs Oran from (Algeria). She was part of convoy KMF-5. On board were 5122 people, including 440 crew members, 4,408 British and American soldiers, 26 artillerymen and 248 British nurses from the Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service (QAIMNS), led by head nurse Lucy Wane. Also on board were the American photo reporter Margaret Bourke-White and members of Dwight D. Eisenhower's General Staff, including his secretary Mattie Pinette and his chauffeur from the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force , Kathleen Summersby. On December 20, the ship made a stopover in Gibraltar .
On Monday, December 21, 1942, the KMF-5 convoy was attacked in the early hours of the morning by U 562 , a German type VII C submarine under the command of 26-year-old Lieutenant Horst Hamm . At 02.23 a.m., U 562 shot a fan of four torpedoes at the convoy 45 nautical miles north of Oran in bright moonlight and clear weather . Shortly afterwards, two close detonations could be heard on board the submarine. One of the torpedoes struck the Strathallan's port side in the engine room and damaged the bulkhead that separated the engine room from the boiler rooms. A severe tremor went through the ship; the power supply collapsed. An oil tank was also damaged, causing oil to spill into the engine room.
Met ship took immediately a list of 15 degrees to port. Captain Biggs ordered abandonment of the ship and ordered the crew, soldiers and nurses to go to the four motor boats and 16 lifeboats . Boat no. 8 was so badly damaged by the explosion that it could not be made clear, and boat no. 9b could not be lowered into the water because of the list. After it became apparent that the Strathallan was not going to sink quickly, the evacuation was stopped and the people on board were ordered to the starboard side to stabilize the ship. The approximately 1300 people who had already left the ship were picked up by the destroyer of the Royal Navy Verity (Lt. John Charles Rushbrooke, DSC ).
Downfall
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After a rescue operation lasting around two hours, the Strathallan was towed by the destroyer HMS Laforey (Captain Reginald Maurice James Hutton) at around 6 a.m. and towed towards Oran at a speed of five to six knots. The survivors were transferred to the HMS Panther (Lt.Cdr. Robert William Jocelyn) and the HMS Pathfinder (Commander Edward Albert Gibbs, DSO ) and brought to Oran around noon .
The rescue tug Restive (Lt. DM Richards) helped to pump out the absorbed water. Everything indicated that the Strathallan would reach the port of Oran. At 1:15 p.m. on December 21st, the leaking oil came into contact with the still hot kettles and exploded. Flames shot from the chimney. Captain Biggs now ordered all the remaining people to disembark from the ship, which went up in flames amidships. Except for a small remaining crew, including Captain Biggs, Chief Officer John CW Last and Second Engineer GH Lockhead, all were taken on board from the Laforey . The Restive then took the burning Strathallan in tow and set course for Oran.
Against 4:00 in the morning on 22 December, the capsized Strathallan but twelve nautical miles of Oran to port and went in position 36 ° 1 ' N , 0 ° 33' W under. Captain John Henry Biggs was awarded the Lloyd's War Medal for Bravery at Sea for his services and was named Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE). Nurses Julie Kerr and Olive Stewardson, who looked after five seriously injured soldiers, were awarded the Royal Red Cross .
16 people were killed in the attack on the Strathallan , including Royal Air Force men David Burns, Kenneth Russell James, Harold Seymour Phillips, William Fernley Tribe and William Herbert Valentine, crew members Ibrahim, Norman Knox, Harry Morley, Muhammad Akbar , Nazim Din and Saheb Din and the nurses Janet Davidson, Teresa Doran, Esther Hadridge, Edna Mawston and Helen Porterfield.
literature
- Brenda McBryde. Quiet Heroines. Nurses of the Second World War . London , Chatto & Windus Ltd. (1985)
- George Henry Garside. The Red Duster at War: A History of the Merchant Navy During the Second World War . London, William Kimber & Co Ltd. (June 1988)
- Neil McCart. P & O's Five White Sisters - Strath Liners of the 1930s . Cheltenham , FAN Publications (1994)
- Peter Padfield. War Beneath the Sea: Submarine Conflict During World War II . London, John Murray (1995)
- Brian James Crabb. Beyond the Call of Duty . Donington, Shaun Tyas / Paul Watkins Publishing (June 1, 2006)